Plumage by Nancy Springer Page A

found would depend on what I’d lost.”
    â€œVoice?”
    â€œVoice from—wild, from the treetops. Near the waterfall.”
    Racquel was sorry he had asked. He didn’t want to know any more, and it was no damn good for Sassy to keep brooding about it and grieving about it. The mirror was broken. She couldn’t go back there, and it was a damn good thing, because “there” was insane. He looked up at her and said, careful to keep his voice gentle, “Sassy, you’ve got to come out of it. Think about living in this world.”
    She did not reply immediately. He could see that his words made little impression on her. But finally she said, “What for? So I can go back to cleaning hotel rooms?”
    â€œYou can get a better job.” With a Vanna White gesture Racquel indicated the stacks of books. “Look at all the stuff you know. You ought to be one of those ortho-knowledge-ists.”
    Sassy barely smiled.
    Racquel let himself get serious. “Damn it, Sassy, what you’ve lost, you’ve lost here , not in some freaky fairyland. Here . Now. But you gotta fight back. Put that hat on, woman.”
    She looked at it, but did not make a move toward it. She said, “I don’t wear hats.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI just don’t. They’re not who I am.”
    She sounded quite sure. Racquel studied her almost in admiration; she knew who she was, weirdness and all? There was only one of her?
    â€œIt’s a pretty hat,” Sassy added as a polite afterthought.
    Racquel asked, “So who are you?”
    â€œHuh?”
    Jeez. She was the one who had brought it up. “Why don’t you wear hats?”
    â€œI’m too old.”
    â€œSince when?”
    â€œAnd I’m too plain.”
    â€œSassy—”
    â€œJust let me alone, Racquel, would you?”
    â€œNo.” He sat back in his chair staring at her. God, she’d lost even more than he had thought. “How are you going to get it back if I let you alone?” He could help her; he knew he could.
    â€œGet back what? My husband?” Sassy soured her mouth to show that she was bitterly joking. “No, thank you.”
    â€œNot your damn husband! I’m talking about you , Sassy! I’m talking about being a woman.” Racquel’s passion jarred him to his feet; he couldn’t help it. Jesus, being a woman—it was the biggest, best, most beautiful project anybody could undertake, worth devoting a lifetime to, which is what it usually took, what with foundation garments and cosmetics and depilatories and everything you had to know, yet there sat Sassy born with the gender he had always wanted, and—how had she lost that sense of herself? How had it happened that she just didn’t care anymore? Racquel blurted, “You got so much going for you, Sassy, I just want to shake you! Don’t you sometimes, just sometimes, want to wear something besides sweatpants ?”
    She blinked up at him without answering. Cute little face. Cute little pointed chin.
    Racquel made himself sit down across from her again. “Look,” he said quietly, “here’s what we’re gonna do to get you feeling better about yourself and everything in general. Skin first. Some apricot scrub maybe, some shower gel, some body splash. Then the hair. Jesus, Sassy, white people can have any color hair they want and get away with it; why should you settle for gray? I got a hairdresser just waiting to get her hands on your hair. Then get your ears pierced—”
    Sassy’s head jerked up with the most spirit she’d shown all day, and her hands flew to her earlobes. “I am not!”
    â€œYes you are, so you can wear all kinds of earrings. You just wait, couple months you’ll be going back for more holes. Then your nails, a manicure—”
    â€œWho’s supposed to be paying for all this?”
    She meant that as an objection,